


Around Her Neck

by silver_fish



Series: bad things happen bingo [3]
Category: A Saga of Light and Dark - T. J. Chamberlain, Original Work
Genre: Family Heirlooms, Gen, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Of Earth and Sky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22728586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish/pseuds/silver_fish
Summary: Nerissa has always relished any piece of her family she can: the old journals of her father's locked away in Emerson's home for twenty long years, the cherished bracelet around her wrist,diókes, even the sword her mother died on, the same one she wielded for so many years before. She knows it is different for Ada, though. She just can'treallyunderstand why.
Relationships: Ada Archer & Nerissa Smith
Series: bad things happen bingo [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634152
Comments: 7
Kudos: 5
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Around Her Neck

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/laphicets) / [tumblr](https://kohakhearts.tumblr.com)
> 
> bad things happen bingo! request was nerissa and ada with "reopening an old wound." this is very much a non-canon scene but these are also real beliefs and feelings the characters have, at least at this point in the timeline. for some context, ada was her mother's murderer, and it happened just weeks before the time this would be set. anyway, i hope you enjoy!

Emerson’s home is not necessarily so in size, but it is large in history. Actually, that could be said for the entirety of Hathet; it is a village of massive historical relevance, despite its low population, and while this house in itself is not implicit in that particular bit of history, it does exist amongst it.

She explained to Nerissa that the house had been built generations before she and Ely, but each inhabitant had left their own marks on it. Heirlooms were important to the Smiths, she said. The ability to trace one’s roots back to individuals, and not just cultures, was the ability to connect with ancestors, completely.

Nerissa has seen a number of such things since they came to Hathet, and she remains amazed by each and every one of them. For her, though, the most important are the ones she finds in Ely’s old room. Journals from his teenage years—from when he was only Nerissa’s age—and numerous collectibles, pocket watches and ceremonial daggers, a carved jewelry box with nothing in it. Each new _thing_ she discovers, she does so with a fervent sense of wonder. Poseidon is not quite as interested as she is, but he likes to see some of the things too, likes to imagine when and why their father got them.

Emmet and Isobel seem pleased for her (or, Isobel does, anyway, but Emmet cannot quite hide his pleasure behind his teasing scorn), though Avery is increasingly uncomfortable in this house, where Ely once lived, before he had even met Adrienne. For Avery, there are memories here, ones that don’t even exist but that leave painful carvings in her chest nonetheless. She does not want to see Ely’s things, and Nerissa would never ask her to.

Ada, though. Ada, who has never seemed anything but supportive, but understanding, grows furious every time Nerissa mentions something she has found. At first, it seemed to Nerissa a mere coincidence, that Ada was really just frustrated with something else and she didn’t have the _time_ to listen to Nerissa’s theories about her family history. After it happened a couple more times, however, Nerissa began to wonder. And so, as she always does, she asked Poseidon about it:

“Do you know why Ada is so upset with me?”

He hesitated for a moment, glancing towards the door and then back to her. “Well,” he said, with the air of someone who knew the answer but desperately didn’t want to say it, “I think she, um…I think she’s jealous.”

Nerissa stared at him.

“Annoyed, too,” he added. “Because you keep rubbing it in her face, probably. Oh, not that you’re doing it on purpose, Issa. I just mean…”

But Nerissa still doesn’t know what he means, though at the time she assured him she did, and she wasn’t offended by his implication. She has been extra cautious around Ada in the past few days, making a very conscious effort to keep herself from mentioning whatever new trinket she has found, though she really does want to share her findings with Ada. With everyone, really, but Ada is different than Emmet, has always been so much easier to talk to.

Eventually, she can’t do it anymore, and so the next time they are alone—which is a rare occurrence, these days—Nerissa says, “You don’t like my family.”

Ada flinches, as if Nerissa has made to strike her. “No,” she says quietly. “That’s not true, Nerissa, I swear.”

“But—”

“It’s not your family, okay?” She looks firmly down at the table. “Not everything is about you.”

What was the mere simmering beginnings of a tide of rage rises up from the pit of her stomach, overwhelming in its strength.

“Are you kidding me?” she demands. “Oh, sure, call me selfish, but you’re not exactly convincing me this isn’t about my dad and his family. I mean, your aunt doesn’t like it either, so what am I supposed to think? You’re Evapakasian, so I guess you wouldn’t understand and that’s fine, but you don’t need to act—”

“I’m not _racist_ , Nerissa.” Her voice is rising too, but not her gaze. “See, you’re making this about you. It’s _not_ , all right?”

“Bullshit,” Nerissa spits. “If it wasn’t about _me_ or _my family_ or _my race_ , then you wouldn’t have any problem saying so!”

Now, Ada looks up, the gold flecks in her eyes golden with anger. “Wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I have a problem telling you about how fucked up _my_ family is when you’re only just getting to know yours? Wouldn’t I have a problem telling you that my family’s history _is_ made up of all those things you’re sitting there accusing me of? That Aetherian nobility is only so because they were the colonizers, and not the colonized? Oh, sure, Nerissa, call me racist! Tell me how vile I am because of the legacies my parents passed on to me! Because _your_ parents are heroes! Your parents did _everything_ for you. They even died for you! They _loved_ you. They never would have even _imagined_ hurting you, let alone actually doing it! You could have done _anything_ and they still would have accepted you! Well, not everyone is so lucky, all right? That’s what you wanted to hear? That I’m pissed off because _you_ have a family and _I_ don’t?”

Nerissa blinks, stricken, trying to make sense of everything Ada has said but unable to grasp it without the things she _hasn’t_ said. Oh, yes, Nerissa already knew that the nobles of Aether had once been the elites of Nakri, the same families who murdered non-Evapakasians and crushed unlike cultures beneath their feet. No, she doesn’t _really_ think Ada is racist, but it is easy to assume when the Ikosi and Enfallen parts of her heritage are written all over her skin, when she has been judged for it her whole life—subtly, in those offended gazes strangers would shoot their way, the disbelief they felt in seeing a white woman with a brown daughter, no father in sight.

But she doesn’t find Ada’s words reassuring. Not at all.

“I _don’t_ have a family, Ada,” she points out, her temper lowering again but just slight. She sighs, exhaling what she can of the rage within her. “That’s why it matters so much to me. And I’m not exactly happy that my parents died for me, either. It doesn’t really make me feel _good_ about myself.”

Ada slumps in her seat, looking exhausted. “I know,” she says, dropping her gaze again. “I know. I didn’t mean that. I just get frustrated, sometimes.”

“Well, that makes sense. I mean, your mom is dead too.”

Ada shakes her head, though. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t…I don’t think this is something you can understand, Nerissa, not any more than I can understand why your family’s culture feels so important to you.”

They both know it’s probably true, but Nerissa can’t help being curious anyway. “Well, I definitely can’t understand if you don’t tell me.”

Abruptly, Ada gets to her feet. Nerissa looks up at her in alarm, but she simply gestures for Nerissa to rise too.

“I want to show you something,” is all she says before she leads Nerissa out of the kitchen and toward the room she has been sharing with her aunt. With fumbling hands, she closes and locks the door behind them, then whirls around to face Nerissa.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she says. “I don’t want them to know.”

Nerissa nods, still feeling rather stunned by the sudden shift. “All right.”

Ada lifts her hands and unclasps the chain around her neck. Nerissa has noticed the necklace before, but never thought much of it. It is inconspicuous, a golden chain with a silver star, moon, and sun dangling from it. She’s been wearing it since they left Aether. Once she has removed it, she hands it to Nerissa, who accepts it and stares dumbly at the other girl, unsure of why she is holding the thing.

“This is the only thing,” Ada says, “that I kept.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the symbols,” she suggests. “There’s writing on them.”

Nerissa lifts the necklace, inspects the crescent moon first. Indeed, something has been engraved on it in a cursive hand, a bit like the _diókes_ on her mother’s bracelet. This says something different, though: _filótim_. When she looks, the star and sun also have Kaltines written on them: _evegin_ and _simankós_.

“Pride,” Ada says quietly. “Noble. Lordly. Do you know what my name means, Nerissa?”

Slowly, Nerissa nods, looking up at her again. Ada, from the beautiful sea nymph Amada—regal, _noble_.

“Pride was for my mother. Cleo, that’s what it means. And Adonis. And then, in the middle, the star—that’s Ada. That’s me. Do you see?”

Nerissa frowns. “It’s a nice necklace, Ada, but why—?”

“I hate her,” Ada interrupts. “But she’s still a part of me. Her and my dad, they gave me this for my fourteenth birthday. It was right before…well, you know that story. Anyway, things were always pretty complicated between us, but I remember that day, and it was…it was good, that’s all. One of the few good things I remember about her.”

Nerissa’s blood goes cold with the words. She knows, of course, has known for quite some time, that Ada’s mother did not love her the way Adrienne loved Nerissa and Poseidon. For Ada, it has always been different. She remembers well the moment Cleo died, when Ada accepted that if she tried to heal Cleo then, her curse would lash out instead, would leave her dead. And she let it.

But that was different, Nerissa sometimes thinks. Cleo was her mother in that final moment, sure, but she was also their enemy. If she didn’t die when she did, they would have paid dearly for it.

“It can’t be the only good thing,” she finally says. “Fourteen years is a long time.”

Ada grimaces. “But she was a cruel person, Nerissa. As soon as it became apparent that I carried the curse, well… I sometimes think that if Dad hadn’t been there too, she might have killed me. Sometimes it felt like that’s what she was trying to do anyway.”

“She wouldn’t have—”

“You didn’t know her,” Ada says sharply. “I did. Better than anybody else in the world, probably. She always told me that it was a poison, that I deserved the isolation because just my _presence_ was toxic, never mind if there was anything around to trigger the curse or not. And it only got worse as I got older. When I started standing up to her, she would slap me, force me to back down by my shoulders. She demanded obedience of me, and my dad just looked the other way. But that year had been the worst, you know. Because she found out something worse about me, even than the curse.”

Hesitantly, Nerissa hands the necklace back to her. “But even the curse wasn’t so bad. Circe called it a blessing, even.”

Not meeting her eyes, Ada accepts it. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “This is…different, though. See…I know you grew up isolated too, but there are some things, in these upper-class noble families—things we don’t talk about. They’re, like, totally taboo. I guess I knew she would take it badly, but I…I hoped, I guess, maybe, that she would be okay with it. Because she didn’t hate me. She just hated the curse.”

Nerissa opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again, realizing that Ada’s hands are trembling from where they are wrapped tightly around the chain of her necklace. Her gaze is cast off to the side, a sort of fear on her face that Nerissa would never have thought possible of her, even. This is not the Ada she knows, the strong and kind girl who welcomed them in the infirmary all those weeks ago. This is someone else entirely, and Nerissa suddenly gets the feeling that she doesn’t even really _know_ Ada at all.

“It’s stupid,” Ada mutters. “To get upset about it, still. She’s not even alive anymore, and my dad doesn’t care so much. I mean, Aunt Avery is the same, and he’s never treated her differently, even when they were young, she says, but…”

“Why don’t we sit down?” Nerissa shifts between her feet awkwardly, not knowing if she should reach out or stay where she is, if she should offer comfort or if Ada would despise her for it, as she knows she would feel that way if their positions were reversed.

“Yeah, okay.” Ada sighs, coming forward and sitting down on her narrow bed. Tentative, Nerissa sits beside her, but leaves a considerable space between them, just in case.

“I get what it’s like,” Ada suddenly says, abrupt. She’s looking forward, though, not Nerissa. “To be hated for something you can’t control. I know it’s different for you, but I do get it. The curse is one thing, but the other…it’s so much more—I don’t know. More pervasive, I guess. See…not so long before my fourteenth birthday, I told my mom…I told her I was gay. Or, I still am, but…well, anyway, she wasn’t happy. She kinda freaked out, told me that I shouldn’t say things like that. It’s evil, it’s wrong, it isn’t natural. I don’t know why, but that just felt so much worse than everything she had ever said to me about my curse. Like…my curse is a curse. But this…I don’t know. It’s a part of me. I wanted to change it, but I can’t. So…she rejected me, then. Not just something about me, some magic I had never even asked for. This was different. It hurt in a different way.”

Nerissa feels her stomach drop with each new word, a feeling she can’t quite identify squeezing her chest tight. She remembers, suddenly, what Avery told her at Adrienne’s funeral: “ _Their ideals were hers, through and through._ ”

Adrienne hadn’t raised them to be aware of much other than their magical differences. Nerissa learned about race along the way, a natural consequence of having dark skin. Adrienne’s own prejudices had been a deep secret to them. Nerissa isn’t always sure, anymore, what their mother believed, and she doesn’t like to think about it, either. Avery said she thinks Ely made Adrienne more accepting, and so Nerissa will simply have to believe the same.

“She… It doesn’t mean she didn’t really love you, though, does it?” Nerissa’s voice is scarcely more than a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Ada says bluntly. But she still won’t look at Nerissa, and her hands have not stopped shaking.

“She was your mother,” Nerissa insists. “She had to have loved you—”

“Did she?” Now, Ada does turn to face her, and to Nerissa’s shock, there are tears glittering in her eyes. “I don’t think she did. I tried, Nerissa. I tried really hard to get her to love me. It never mattered. I think…even if I had been able to rid myself of the curse, or if I had just been _normal_ —it wouldn’t have changed anything. Maybe then she would hate me because I inherited my dad’s eyes, instead of hers, or because I didn’t want to learn to fight. And I get now that even my curse…it’s a part of me too, something I can’t change, and I’m sick of _wanting_ to change it. My pact with Circe helped that, but there’s no magical entity out there that can make me happy I’m a lesbian. I know now that, even if there were, it wouldn’t have made a difference, but…then, I wondered, sometimes. If maybe she would have hated me just a little bit less. So…when my birthday came around, and they gave me this necklace—it felt like a forgiveness, almost. Because she smiled and she wished me a happy birthday and she told me she loved me, and this necklace proves that she did.”

She sighs, bowing her head again. “It’s pathetic,” she says, and the self-loathing is clearer in her tone even than in the words. “I can’t help it, though. There’s a part of me that still yearns for her love, and so…after she died…I started wearing the necklace again. All the better we were coming here, because I didn’t want to make my dad remember too.”

Nerissa opens her mouth, then closes it again, feeling lost. She has comforted people before, sure—has comforted Poseidon more times than she can count, though he would probably be the first to say she’s never been very _good_ at it—but this feels very different, intimate, like Ada has given her something extremely fragile and just one miscalculation will leave it shattered.

“I’ve never told anyone all of it before,” Ada says quietly, so quietly Nerissa has to lean a little closer to hear. “My dad never listened, and I didn’t want Emmet to know. Aunt Avery…she knows some of it, but mostly just the things she was there for. She had never liked my mother anyway, always said my dad should have done better, could still _do_ better.” Her shoulders are very tense, Nerissa realizes, in what looks like a rather painful position.

Hesitantly, she reaches forward and sets one hand atop Ada’s shoulder. Immediately, her muscles relax, and she lets out a long breath before looking up and mustering a small smile.

“Sorry,” she says. “I don’t want you to think I don’t want to hear about your family, Nerissa. But sometimes it still hurts, and in a lot of ways her dying has helped, but in other ways…well, it just feels different, that’s all. The absence of fear, or rejection, like those things became these essential part of me, all tied up with my curse and my sexuality and all the other things she must have hated about me.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Nerissa says, awkwardly, though in a sense she did engineer all of this, to, in fact, very intentionally upset Ada.

“It’s okay,” Ada tells her, miraculously managing to dig out the apology from her words. She always does, Nerissa thinks. Always knows what Nerissa is trying to say even when Nerissa doesn’t really know, herself.

“I shouldn’t have pushed you, though. Or accused you of what I did. You’ve always been really kind to me. I didn’t really think…”

“It’s okay,” Ada says again. “Really. I should have been honest sooner. I hurt your feelings too.” Hesitating for a moment, she eventually scoots closer to Nerissa and wraps an arm around her in an uncomfortable sideways hug. “I wanted to tell you,” she admits after a long pause. “I just didn’t think you would understand.”

“I don’t,” Nerissa says honestly. “But you’re right about my parents. I doubt I ever got old enough before they both died to see all their faults. Well, maybe my mom, but I’m still learning things about her too. I mean, we never knew what her name was, and if we asked she wouldn’t tell. I guess Cherri is a pretty big name, though, even in Derayn.”

“Yeah.” Ada pulls away from her and smiles a little more genuinely, though it still seems to wobble slightly. “I know this is a little out of your comfort zone, so…thanks for hearing me out. And…if you want to tell me about your dad’s family, I’d be happy to listen.”

Nerissa blinks. “Really?”

“Really,” she affirms, and before she can say anything else, the sound of opening doors and familiar voices seeps in through beneath the closed door. She stands, rolling her shoulders, then offers a hand down to Nerissa.

Nerissa takes it, making an effort to maintain the contact as long as she can, not wanting Ada to feel like she _can’t_ touch her or anything like that. Ada must notice this, though, because she looks amused.

“I don’t think you’re a raging homophobe any more than you think I’m a racist jerk, you know.”

Nerissa feels herself flush. “Well, I—I didn’t want to do anything to make you think that.”

“I’ll never think that,” Ada assures her. “I trust you. Completely.”

Nerissa’s chest seems to swell with the words, and the stinging in her cheeks becomes something else entirely, a pride she can never quite remember feeling before.

“Let’s get back, then,” Ada says, turning, losing the contact entirely, to unlock and open the door. When they rejoin with Emerson and Avery, who have begun to cook while Emmet and Isobel entertain Poseidon with a complicated-looking card game, Ada beams brightly, asking how their day was. She gives no indication that, only minutes ago, she had been close to tears, but both Poseidon and Avery slant knowing looks in Nerissa’s direction, and she gets the feeling there are things about Ada that they understand without having to be told.

But she is not Poseidon or Avery, and she _does_ need to be told to understand. And, apparently, Ada trusts her enough to tell.

She remains warmed by that thought for a very, very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are always appreciated! xx
> 
> if you're interested in learning more about or reading my novel series, i post all info on twitter [@laphicets](https://twitter.com/laphicets) and tumblr [@kohakhearts](https://kohakhearts.tumblr.com)! feel free to find me for general writing updates too; i also sometimes take fic requests on both platforms!


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